I would like to comment on the published letter by Gail Faris who believes the out-of-town driver would have slowed down if given a warning by the RCMP instead of having her car impounded.
The driving habits displayed in Prince George are nothing short of diabolical; excessive speed, incorrect lane changing, ignoring "keep right" signs and cell phone use - most surprisingly, texting - are rampant. I have driven and been a pedestrian throughout the Lower Mainland and southern Ontario and have not seen the frequency of dangerous driving incidents like I have here.
Every day I watch traffic go up and down Pilot Street at speeds approaching double that of the posted limit, which is 30km/h. I watch parents race down these roads to drop their children off at Foothills school safely while completely ignoring the safety of hundreds of other children making their way to both Foothills and D.P. Todd on foot.
The driver you portray as a victim is yet another example of the oblivious vehicle operator who thinks that pointing their vehicle in the general direction of their destination is proper driving.
Instead of being concerned with how we offended this visitor to our city you should be thanking the RCMP member for educating this 'driver' in such a manner that she will probably pay more attention to how she drives her car in the future.
More importantly, we should all be thanking good fortune that we are reading about a bad driver being punished rather than reading a child's name in the obituaries.
By the way, using your phone to call or text at a red light is illegal. Nothing is so important that a driver can't pull to the side of the road to make a call or send a text message. The haters will disagree until they kill someone or have someone close to them killed.
Mike Maslen
Prince George
